cousin PK... public sector production guy

By Owen Paine on Friday June 22, 2012 08:57 AM

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/opinion/krugman-prisons-privatization-patronage.html?_r=1
this ball was hit to my position

paul krugman has a colum ..a fifth coulmn in fact
on the jersey punition and rehab system
in particular
" privately run adjuncts to the regular system of prisons"

best line
"Chris Christie, the state’s governor — who has close personal ties to Community Education Centers, the largest operator of these facilities, and who once worked as a lobbyist for the firm — described the company’s operations as “representing the very best of the human spirit.” But The Times’s reports instead portray something closer to hell on earth "

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/nyregion/in-new-jersey-halfway-houses-escapees-stream-out-as-a-penal-business-thrives.html?_r=2&gwh=9484481FC2F074A6612741853A3F77FF


and all this great grey hag pitch perfect muck raking
really gets paul going

he soon soars to the level of relevent generality

"on contracting out public functions " one might label it

and once up there....opiled and ready why then
he sez
he sez""..if you think about it even for a minute, you realize that the one thing the companies that make up the prison-industrial complex — companies like Community Education or the private-prison giant Corrections Corporation of America — are definitely not doing is competing in a free market. They are, instead, living off government contracts. There isn’t any market here, and there is, therefore, no reason to expect any magical gains in efficiency. "

then he gets into motives

de unionizing short run budget gimmicks blah blah
but this is where he puts the emphasis

here is the key link as we maophytes say

"Never mind what privatization does or doesn’t do to state budgets"

" think instead of what it does for both the campaign coffers and the personal finances of politicians and their friends."


" As more and more government functions get privatized, states become pay-to-play paradises, in which both political contributions and contracts for friends and relatives become a quid pro quo for getting government business. Are the corporations capturing the politicians, or the politicians capturing the corporations? Does it matter? "

i got another "does it matter "

does it matter which batch of corporate butt beagles are buying our government ?

does it matter if its union dues money or corporate pack money ?

does it matter ...does any of this MATTER !

Comments (1)

I don't think it matters much, except insofar as an opponent's saying that a politician is corrupt is an excellent rhetorical device for spicing up a political disagreement.

Regardless of their philosophical predilections, however, pols and their well-heeled constituents have been doing this type of thing since antiquity. That the practice is considered offensive and corrupt says more about our latent puritanism than anything else.

Corruption doesn't bother me -- provided, of course, that I'm among the beneficiaries. If I don't stand to benefit then I view corruption as nothing less than the work of Satan himself.

The learned Krugman appears to concur with this view, at least to a certain extent.

Post a comment

Note also that comments with three or more links may be held for "moderation" -- a strange term to apply to the ghost in this blog's machine. Seems to be a hard-coded limitation of the blog software, unfortunately.

About

This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on Friday June 22, 2012 08:57 AM.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

Creative Commons License

This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Powered by
Movable Type 3.31